Enfant Terrible
by labyrinths
Summary: Part of the Cinq Fois series of stories. Elizabeth as a young girl and then a woman and her thoughts on Jack. JE


**Enfant Terrible**

_  
Authors Note: I am planning to write five pieces each with a title in French. They are not necessarily interconnected but they each share one trait in common, they all have to do with a famous French phrase (I am calling this little exercise Cinq Fois). So go read Déjà vu if you have not, this is Enfant Terible and the next three will be: L'espirit de l'escalier, Noblesse oblige and Bête noire. Quick question, is it easier if I just add chapters to this or if I post the rest of the stories as their own entries . Thanks & I love your feedback._

Elizabeth was thirteen years old when she fell in love with Jack Sparrow. Or rather, with a picture of Jack Sparrow. For two years she listened eagerly to any stories about him.  
He was the most exciting of all the pirates she had ever heard about and his adventures the most fun, with elaborate settings and daring escapes a plenty. Secretly, Elizabeth prayed for Port Royale to be sacked by the infamous pirate so she could be spirited away to the ocean, to the high seas and treasure and magic. An enfant terrible for wishing such things.  
She thirsted for horizons, calling his name atop the jagged rocks along the beach. But there was no answer. He never came.  
Elizabeth never forgave him for this, this deep betrayal. Furious at her former self, her childish self, she concentrated all her efforts on someone real, someone solid and true and not just a figment of a girl's imagination.  
Two years after falling in love with Jack Sparrow she turned to Will Turner and ever after, whenever the pirates name was mentioned, she remembered him with a scowl, ashamed of that silly phase of her life.

When she saw him in the flesh she was shocked. Jack did not look like the drawing in the book.  
The illustration had shown a younger man, clean-shaven and with his hair pulled back, striking an exaggerated romantic pose, his hand on the hilt of his sword. The Jack she met stank of rum, stumbled like a fool and had all matter of trinkets tied to his hair, a couple of disgusting golden teeth (his teeth having been pearly white and all in their proper place in the drawing) and looked much less dashing.  
His eyes, however, were the same and smiled at her like they had from the black and white page.  
So much for fantasy.

When they were marooned on the island she had already become friendly with disappointment and so it did not surprise her one bit that the sea turtle story was a lie and he had done nothing buy lay baking under the sun, drunk for three full days.  
He was not a hero, but a lecherous disgusting pirate and yet as they sat down on the sand and he showed Elizabeth his scars, as they swapped stories and danced arm in arm she could not help but forgive him.  
He was only a man but surprisingly Elizabeth discovered she did not dislike the man. Had things been different they might have been friends for Jack seemed to possess a keen and natural understanding of her.  
But considering the circumstances, he being a dissolute pirate and she a governor's daughter in love with an upright blacksmith, such ideas were for naught.  
No, they would never be friends Jack Sparrow and her. They would never meet again either. She put all thoughts about him away, just as she had done many years before when as a young girl he'd broken her heart.

Elizabeth found herself thinking of Jack at the oddest times. She'd be in the drawing room, reading calmly and suddenly she would jerk her head up as though someone had called her name.  
Jack, she thought on those occasions although she did not understand why his name came to mind and sometimes even to her lips, spilling in the wind, carried away by the tide.  
One evening when the sun was turning blood red in the ocean Elizabeth had hurried to the rocks where she used to sit and call for him as a younger girl. Fists and teeth clenched she stared at the water but did not utter a single word.

On the day of her wedding there was something strange in the air. She was struck with an irrational fear. When Will was late and it started to rain the fear crept deeper, clutching her heart and making her gasp.  
And when Becket said his name she felt incredibly furious as though Jack Sparrow had orchestrated the whole debacle just to vex her.

Frustrated, angry and disappointed, when she finally made her way to the docks of Tortuga and the Pearl there was no sweetness left for Jack. No friendship, no nothing but the burning desire to find Will and curse Jack for wrecking everything.  
Damn him for making her think about him and for giving her that sharp smile that cut through all the layers of clothing, making her want to blush.

Even if she wanted nothing of Jack Sparrow she found herself edging towards him, stray magnets inching closer together.  
Though she had not thought about it in years, not since she was a skinny teenager, Elizabeth found herself wondering what it might be like to sail away with the pirate and let everything else be damned.   
Curiosity returning at an alarming pace.  
Until curiosity turned into a kiss, the kiss melting into death and now everything should be fine because they were safe, she was with Will. But all she wanted to do was run and scream at the ocean, scream until her throat was raw, Jack's name bouncing off the rocks.

Elizabeth did not scream although she found herself humming at nights. She could not stop the songs; all those songs she'd sung as a child and she'd forgotten as a woman. Somehow she hoped Jack could hear her, her voice guiding him home.

When he returned, her lord of the underworld come to fetch his Persephone, Elizabeth pressed her palms against his own in wonder.  
Years later, one night, she found herself babbling about that former self of hers that had fancied him.  
He'd chuckled and told her it must have been fate steering them towards each other.  
She thought perhaps it had been.


End file.
